The Question World: Thoughts On Writing in the 21st Century

First thing on the path — I was running through the woods — worms writhing this mid-summer morning in a death dance after drowning all night long in a torrential, black rain. Bouncing and leaping into the air, up from their dark tunnels collapsing and spewing water everywhere, they were no doubt more afraid of drowning in that world of their own making than dying on the sunlit surface of this tiny green and blue planet with the rest of us.

I try to go down the trail silently. My dog senses this and prances methodically by my side, not even panting.

Thoughts come to me regarding the purpose of literature. It is said often that there are two schools of

When I Noticed We Stopped Thinking: Over Sangria and Marinated Meat

It was a warm weekend evening in September of 1985. We sat in our small urban backyard, pink clouds over-head, starting on a second pitcher of Sangria after a shish-ka-bob and salad dinner. I was more or less happy. I’d become aware of the need to marinate meat the week before and the beef and lamb skewered between red onion, green peppers, and fresh cut pineapple was as tasty as anything you’d get at the Shiska-Wu truck downtown. It was a beautiful evening. Our friends, I’ll call them Gary and Monica, were happy, too. We were all happy — satiated, a bit tipsy, present in the beautiful evening together, young, fit, beautiful, on our way. Gary and Monica were just hitting 30. We — my wife at the time, and I — were just edging that way at 27.

And then I brought up the earthquake that had just happened in Mexico. Michoacan